Journey of the Magi

 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

(T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi, 1927, Collected Poems 1909-1962, Harcourt, 1963).

When Eliot wrote his famous poem, the magi all still arrived on the same day every year. Now, thanks to the late 20th-century liturgical calendar reforms, they come early in the U.S. - this year two days early. That also means we get only 10 "Days of Christmas" this Year, hence no "11 Ladies Dancing" and no "12 Lords a Leaping" this year, at least in the U.S.).

I don't know how cold it really was for the magi. Eliot calls it the very dead of winter. Whatever it may have been there and then, it certainly has been a cold coming for them this year. Eliot's poem portrayed a cold world not just in weather, but a cold-hearted world, which certainly is what the magi would be encountering in their journey this year.

Of course, we know next to nothing about the actual magi, the ones Matthew's Gospel tells us about. We have counted them as three because of the number of their gifts, and crowned them as kings because of the resonance of Psalm 72. From the title Matthew gives them we can assume they were wise. From their behavior, we infer that they were seekers - not New Age dilettantes but genuine seekers searching for life-changing truth, which indeed they found not in Herod's palace but in a much less unexpected place a short distance away. Bethlehem was just a few miles away, but it might as well have been a world away not just for the power politicians at Herod's court but for the religious and cultural elite. They were the academic intellectuals of their time, learned scholars who completely missed the point of their learning. They correctly discerned the place to go, but unlike the true seekers, the magi, they stayed home, clinging to the comforts of the status quo.

Matthew tells us that when the star reappeared, the magi were overjoyed. The politicians stayed put, as did the intellectuals, but the truly wise went forward, following the star and finding what they sought. The magi set out as true pilgrims – and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother … prostrated themselves and did him homage. In the old liturgy, when these words were read or sung in the Gospel on Epiphany, everyone was directed to genuflect. It was the liturgy’s dramatic way of physically bringing the point of the story home, helping us to identify personally with the pilgrim magi, experiencing what they experienced. Our overly wordy and ritually impoverished contemporary worship deprives us of that direct physical identification with the experience of the magi. We must work extra hard to get where our ancestors arrived naturally, kneeling in homage in the presence of life-changing truth.

After Epiphany, like the magi, we too must return to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.

A New Year; A New Mayor

Happy New Year! 

"It is the common custom in meeting of friends at this season, to greet each other with a Happy New Year! This is a praiseworthy and pleasant custom, and in accordance with it, I greet you all, my dear brethren, with a Happy New Year! Happy New Year to all our friends and the inhabitants of this city, and to all our countrymen, whether dwelling north or south, east or west, in this our native land. Happy New year to all men of whatever race or clime; for God is our common Creator, and in Christ we are all sons of God, and therefore brethren." (Servant of God Isaac Hecker, Sermon How To Be Happy, January 1, 1863).

And, speaking of "this city," with this new year comes a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, New York City's 111th mayor since Thomas Willett first bore the title after the office was established in 1665. Things were a lot different then. Willett was appointed by the British colonial governor. Mamdani attracted 140,000 volunteers to his campaign and was elected by a majority of the city's voters. Mamdani is also the first South-Asian and the first Muslim to be elected New York City's Mayor. 

After the overthrow of the Orleanist monarchy and subsequent unexpected events in mid-19th-century France, Karl Marx famously wrote, "all France has been surprised by Paris." Perhaps, with Mamdani's election, it can likewise been said that the United States has been surprised by New York. Whatever else his election many portend, it has highlighted the widespread and deep dissatisfaction with neoliberal oligarchy (what AOC at Mayor Mamdani's Inauguration called "the barbarism of extreme income inequality") and a general desire for something better, for a city that fulfills the promise of a more flourishing life for its citizens.

It was little over a year ago that Mamdani was barely even noticed at the 2024 San Juan Somos conference. "I was blending into the walls," was how he described it to New York Magazine's David Freedlander. That he is now mayor reflects the amazing intersection of  personal political talents and the exigencies of this challenging moment in our history. (Something similar happened nationally in the 20th century when FDR's and LBJ's unique personal political talents intersected with the unique opportunities presented by the 1930s and the 1960s. It was FDR who famously said "the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.")

There are and will be many obstacles to any mayor's achieving his objectives. At best, local politics is about choosing which scarce resources will be allocated among which competing constituencies, and so which constituencies must settle for less than they want. But politics-as-usual has a way of narrowing the very possibilities of politics. As Mamdani himself has acknowledged to Freedlander, "the longer you spend in politics, the less possible you think things are in politics." Perhaps the biggest challenge to any newcomer to our rigid and sclerotic governance is to convince the relevant political constituencies that things actually can be accomplished, that changes actually can occur. 

Fittingly, in his inaugural address promising an agenda of :safety, affordability, and abundance," Mayor Mamdani said, "the only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.

Photo: Senator Bernie Sanders administers the mayoral oath of office to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, City Hall, January 1, 2026.

New Year's Eve

The Times Square New Year's Eve "Ball" (photo) is ready for its annual descent later tonight. And millions of us are getting ready to watch it, in person at Times Square or, more likely, on TV, each of us uniting our individual histories and hopes with millions of others, all associating ourselves with this reliable ritual. What is it about the annual turn of the calendar that brings out all this intense emotion and activity at midnight tonight?

I am reminded of the finale of season 6 of Downton Abbey, set appropriately on New Year's Eve, and this final dialogue between Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, and Isobel Crawley;

Violet: "It makes me smile! The way every year we drink to the future, whatever it may bring."

Isobel: "What else can we drink to? We're going forwards into the future, not back into the past!"

Violet: "If only we had the choice!"

Presumably, the Dowager Countess was intended to represent a nostalgic affection for a more stable past in contrast to a plainly uncertain future. Fair enough, although the 30 or so years of the early 20th century that the series supposedly had covered clearly contradicted any notion of a better, more stable past as a time to choose to go back to, were that option ever actually available. For better or for worse, as Isobel well understood, we are propelled forward into the future, whether we like it or not. So we might as well toast the future, "whatever it may bring."

That said, New Year's Eve does make me nostalgic for New Year's Eves past and the worlds we have lost - and, more to the point, the people, once part of my life, who have been lost, starting, of course, with my own family. I think back to years of joyful New Year's Eves spent, in a kind of timeless, suspended childhood innocence, with a multitude of aunts, uncles, and cousins, then seemingly important players in my small world, now long gone, that world itself now just a shadow.

I now have the privilege of spending New Year's Eve with friends from my Church family. Time passing by loses much of its allure with advancing age. But friendship abides, and assumes even greater significance as it fills up what is increasingly lacking in life's obviously waning years.

Time has always been very precious – precisely, I suppose, because we have only such a limited supply of it, a reality of which New Year's Eve so forcefully reminds us. But, by becoming part of our limited time in the Incarnation of the Son  of God which we celebrate with such splendor at this season, God has turned our limited time on earth into a time of unlimited opportunity. Against the lamentable background of cherished memories of people passed away, lives lost, relationships ruptured, and unfulfilled expectations, the mystery of the Incarnation invites us to look ahead to a new year with gratitude for God's gifts and to go forward into an uncertain and possibly frightening future, not without anxiety, but buoyed nonetheless by the transcendent hope that counts as one of God’s greatest Christmas gifts to us.

A Really Rough Year

Whatever else may be said or sayable about our troubled time, 2025 has certainly been a really rough year. To paraphrase a famous 1992 speech by Queen Elizabeth II, 2025 "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure." 

That said, for me personally, 2025 has nonetheless had some very happy high points - in particular, the celebration of my 30th ordination anniversary in the affirming and fulfilling setting of family, friends, and religious community. This year also saw the surprising, but so very satisfying election of an American Augustinian as Pope Leo XIV. His rootedness in religious community (one so dear to me from my own upbringing and early education), his missionary experience in Peru, and his inspired choice of name all invite enthusiasm and hope for the Church and evoke echoes of Servant of God Isaac Hecker's hope in "the dawning light of an approaching, brighter, more glorious future for God's Holy Church."

And, at my age, any year lived well without serious illness is a good year in at least that limited personal sense! For all of that I am grateful.

But, beyond such admittedly positive personal perspectives, 2025 has still been a really rough year for the world in general, a grim year for far too many people in particular. I think of people increasingly alienated from one another by political and cultural differences in our troubled and conflicted society, some struggling to buy groceries or pay a medical bill or, even worse, worried about being targeted for violent harassment and the dangers of deportation. It has been a year of unprecedentedly arrogant political overreach and of corresponding cowardice on the part of cultural elites. Abroad, it has been a year of continued warfare and war's related civilian suffering. And that most ancient and persistent of the world's hatreds - antisemitism - has dramatically increased on both the political left and the political right.

For much of this year, a feeling of helpless passivity has been the main response to much of this. Only as the year limped to its end - in the wake, for example, of the November off-year-elections - has there been any perceptible change of mood. Even so, much irreversible damage. has been done. I think, for example, of the catastrophic consequences of the loss of USAID, which expended less than 1% of the U.S. Budget, but which was a world class life saver. I think too of all the children who may get measles - or worse - thanks to changes in vaccine policies.

There are several lenses through which one can consider the calamities of 2025. One which has acquired considerable popularity in the discourse, thanks to its successful use as an issue in the off-year elections, is affordability. In a general sense, that refers to the obvious fact that flourishing human and social life require people to earn enough to live adequately - to enjoy reasonable safety and security, to have suitable jobs that preferably provide benefits and some mobility, to be able to educate their children to live as well or better, etc. Meanwhile, the interests of the ruling oligarchy have diverged farther and farther from those of the mass of the population, with the latter increasingly treated as an unwelcome and increasingly redundant burden interfering with the oligarchy's profits. (The rise of AI may now realize the oligarchic ideal of eliminating any need to pay human workers! As Karl Marx observed back in 1856, "The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want.")

Another complementary lens through which to interpret our present distress is the retreat from pluralistic, constitutional order and rule of law into authoritarianism. About this, we have a lonh legacy of reflection from classical philosophy, which we know was somewhat preoccupied with the problem of the decline of democracy into despotism. In Book VIII of the Republic, Plato famously described the deterioration of his ideal city into the corrupt forms of oligarchy and democracy. The latter leads to despotism when the people support a demagogue. For anyone who ever doubted the abiding relevance of ancient political philosophy, both Plato and Aristotle had much to say that remains relevant to our contemporary democratic decline. So, of course, do more modern thinkers, like Alexis de Tocqueville who lived through French democratic decline into despotism under Napoleon III.

Looking beyond our borders, the lens of international relations offers a similarly depressing take on recent events. It is increasingly evident that the relatively stable post-World War II international order, that was largely guaranteed by a combination of overwhelming American power and moderately benign American interests is quickly coming to an end, as the world reverts to a previously common international order of competing spheres of interest. Thus, for  example, before its post-war internationalism, the U.S. seemed largely animated by the Monroe Doctrine, according to which whatever other empires did in their respective spheres of interest generally was not seen as a threat to American interests or values as long as other empires recognized the western hemisphere as the American empire's exclusive sphere of interest. Meanwhile, the damage done to the network of alliances that has managed the world these past 80 years has been perhaps irrevocable. All the while, much of the world (including Europe) is accordingly reverting to what was in the past the normal condition of war or threat of war.

Meanwhile back at home, the fragile network laboriously built up over generations of a pluralistic, increasingly open society has been challenged and has demonstrably frayed, as the always present nativist xenophobic streak in American culture has loudly and dangerously reasserted itself. For many immigrants and asylum seekers, the result has been direct personal tragedy. For many groups, it has been a collective trauma. For the nation as a whole, irreparable damage has been done to the institutions and relationships that have held our society together and have contributed so much to its peace and prosperity.

So, whatever else may be said, 2025 has been a very grim year, a really rough year for our country and our world.

Hamnet (The Movie)

 

In times past, I often ended the year reviewing the movies I had seen and rating them. I go to the movies so much less now that reviewing and rating no longer has much point. My final film of the year does, however, inspire some comment.

Hamnet is a historically-based drama, based on a novel about William Shakespreare's. marriage, the death of his son Hamnet, and the consequent composition of the play Hamlet. Shakespeare's family were real, although his actual wife was Anne, while in the movie she is named Agnes.

The film is somewhat slow-going at the start. Shakespeare, the son of a glove-maker, is Latin tutor for some local boys and falls in love with a local girl named Agnes, who is reputed to be the daughter of a forest witch. (She does spend a lot of time in the forest, with her hawk, and knows a lot about herbs. There is the suggestion that Agnes may practice some form of natural religion or folk practices representing surviving pagan ideas and traditions within  Christian Europe. I have no idea whether anything like this was the case with Shakespeare's actual wife.) Over the objections of their families, the two marry and have a daughter, followed by twins, a son and a daughter. 

Shakespeare is frustrated and moves to London, where, of course, he eventually becomes involved in the theater. In Stratford, the twins contract plague. The daughter survives, but the son, Hamnet, who had aspired to join his father's theater company, dies. His parents plunge into grief, but Shakespeare quickly returns to work in London, leaving Agnes angry, their relationship somewhat strained. She and her brother travel to London's Globe Theater to attend the performance of Hamlet, the dramatic product of its author's fatherly grief. The famous revenge-tragedy is presented in the film as a play about family mourning and loss and the challenge (and ultimate impossibility) of setting things right again. 

As the play (in which the author himself appears as the ghost of Hamlet's father) unfolds and reaches its tragic ending, Agnes identifies her son with the actor playing the dying Hamlet. She hauntingly extends her hands to reach out to the actor, a gesture the audience then joins in with her, fully making the play a common collective tribute to her lost son.

The movie may have seemed somewhat slow-going at the start, but it picks up in intensity, and its ending is genuinely beautiful.